Dr. Yaakov Ariel
Dr. Yaakov Ariel is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Chicago, where he completed a doctoral degree on Christian Messianic groups and their relation to Jews and Zionism. His research focuses on Protestant Christianity and its attitudes towards the Jewish people; on Judeo-Christian relations in the modern era; and on the Jewish reaction to modernity. His second book, Evangelizing the Chosen People, was awarded the Albert C. Outler prize by the American Society of Church History. Dr. Ariel is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies.
Dr. Darrell Bock
Dr. Darrell Bock is the Executive Director of Cultural Engagement and senior research professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He has earned recognition as a Humboldt Scholar (The University of Tübingen, Germany), and has authored more than forty books, including well-regarded commentaries on Luke, Acts, and several addressing the historical Jesus. From 2000–2001, he served as president of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). He currently serves on the boards of Wheaton College and Chosen People Ministries and is a consulting editor for Christianity Today. His articles appear in leading publications and he is often an expert for the media on New Testament issues. Dr. Bock has been a New York Times best-selling author in nonfiction and is elder emeritus at Trinity Fellowship Church in Dallas. Dr. Bock’s publications include, Jesus according to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels; Jesus in Context: Background Readings for Gospel Study; Studying the Historical Jesus: A Guide to Sources and Methods; Jesus the Messiah: Tracing the Promises, Expectations, and Coming of Israel’s King; Who Is Jesus?: Linking the Historical Jesus with the Christ of Faith; Key Events in the Life of the Historical Jesus: A Collaborative Exploration of Context and Coherence.
Dr. Amy Jill-Levine
Dr. Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt (Divinity and A&S). She is also Affiliated Professor at the Woolf Institute: Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations in Cambridge, England. Dr. Levine has held grants from the Mellon Foundation, NEH, and ACLS, and she has held office in the Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Association, and the Association for Jewish Studies. She served as Alexander Robertson Fellow (University of Glasgow), and the Catholic Biblical Association Scholar to the Philippines. In Spring 2019, she was the first Jew to teach New Testament at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute. She has given more than 500 lectures on the Bible, Christian-Jewish relations, and religion, gender, and sexuality across the globe. Her books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus; Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi; The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us (with Douglas Knight); The New Testament, Methods and Meanings (with Warren Carter); and The Gospel of Luke (with Ben Witherington III; the first full-length biblical commentary co-authored by a Jew and an Evangelical).
Dr. Carl Kinbar
Dr. Carl Kinbar is the director of the New School of Jewish Studies and leads a team of teachers who focus on Hebrew text study. For several years, he served as director of the Messianic Theological Institute and Tikkun Ministries. He has a master’s degree in Jewish studies from Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, and he earned his doctorate in Ancient Near Eastern Studies from the University of South Africa. His main area of interest is Midrash and its relevance for the interpretation and theology of the Tanakh and the New Testament. Dr. Kinbar received his rabbinic ordination from the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations and is a member of the Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council, serving on committees in both organizations. After decades of involvement in congregational leadership and teaching in various settings, he is now a teacher and writer on the subject of the Sages and their relationship to the Tanakh and the New Testament. He also leads Midrash study retreats at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. His publications include “Messianic Jews and Scripture” and “Messianic Jews and Jewish Tradition” in Introduction to Messianic Judaism (Rudolph and Willitts), and “Missing factors in Jewish-Christian dialogue” in the Princeton Theological Review and several articles in Kesher, Messiah Journal.
Dr. Mark Kinzer
Dr. Kinzer is a senior scholar and president emeritus of the Messianic Jewish Theological Institute. He received his PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan, and his rabbinical ordination from the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC). He is co-chair of the Helsinki Consultation on the Jewish Continuity of the Body of Christ and one of the founders of the Society for Post-Supersessionist Theology. He has served on various UMJC committees, is one of the founders of Hashivenu (a theological forum) and the Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council (MJRC). He also serves as rabbi emeritus of Congregation Zera Avraham in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a congregation he founded in 1993. Dr. Kinzer has been a member of the Messianic Jewish-Roman Catholic Dialogue Group since its inception in 2000. He is also a member of the theological dialogue between the Messianic Jewish Movement and the Anglican Church in North America. He is author of Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen: The Resurrected Messiah, the Jewish People, and the Land of Promise; Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People; Israel’s Messiah and the People of God: A Vision for Messianic Jewish Covenant Fidelity; and Searching Her Own Mystery: Nostra Aetate, the Jewish People, and the Identity of the Church.
Dr. Jodi Magness
Dr. Jodi Magness holds a senior endowed chair in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism (since 2002). She is an archeologist and the president of the Archeological Institute of America. She has published ten books, including The Archeology of the Holy Land, and dozens of articles. From 1992–2002, Dr. Magness was Associate/Assistant Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archeology in the Departments of Classics and Art History at Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts. She received her doctorate in classical archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1990–1992, Professor Magness was Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Syro-Palestinian Archeology at the Center for Old World Archeology and Art at Brown University. She specializes in the archeology of ancient Palestine (modern Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories) in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods. Her research interests include Jerusalem, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient synagogues, Masada, the Roman army in the East, and ancient pottery.
Vladimir Pikman
Dr. Adolfo Roitman
Dr. Adolfo Roitman is the curator of the Shrine of the Book, which houses the Dead Sea Scrolls collection at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. He earned his doctorate in Ancient Jewish Thought from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A senior lecturer at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, Dr. Roitman lectures widely on early Jewish literature, the history and significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and biblical interpretation. He has also served as a visiting scholar at universities across the United States and Central and South America. He is the author of numerous books about the Dead Sea Scrolls, including The Sectarians from Qumran: Daily Life of the Essenes, and A Day at Qumran: The Dead Sea Sect and Its Scrolls.
Dr. David Rudolph
Dr. David Rudolph is the director of Messianic Jewish Studies and professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at The King’s University in Southlake, Texas. He earned his doctorate in New Testament from Cambridge University. From 2008–2011, he served on the faculty of the Messianic Jewish Theological Institute (MJTI). Dr. Rudolph has published numerous books and articles on the New Testament, Second Temple Judaism, and Judeo-Christian relations. His publications include the Second Edition of A Jew to the Jews: Jewish Contours of Pauline Flexibility in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, which won the Franz Delitzsch Prize from the Freie Theologische Hochschule in Germany, and Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations (with Joel Willitts). Dr. Rudolph is currently working on the “Introduction to the Pauline Corpus” for The New Oxford Bible Commentary and several book projects related to post-supersessionism and Jewish continuity. He is also a Messianic Jewish rabbi and served for six years at Shulchan Adonai Messianic Synagogue in Annapolis, Maryland, and for four years at Tikvat Israel in Richmond, Virginia.
Joseph Shulam
Joseph Shulam was born in Sofia, Bulgaria on March 24, 1946 to a Sephardic Jewish family. In 1948, his family immigrated to Israel just before the establishment of the State. Joseph studied biblical archeology and Jewish thought in the Second Temple period at the Hebrew University, as well as New Testament and Chemistry at the David Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition, Mr. Shulam studied at an Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva (rabbinical college) in Jerusalem. Joseph is the founder of Netivyah Bible Instruction Ministry based in Jerusalem. Netivyah is an organization of Jewish disciples of Yeshua the Messiah. It is engaged in study, research, and publication of academic materials and commentaries on the Jewish foundations of the New Testament. Netivyah is also active in providing humanitarian aid and food for those in need in Jerusalem. Mr. Shulam speaks seven languages—Hebrew, Bulgarian, English, Ladino (Spanish), German, Arabic, and French, and travels extensively around the world teaching and preaching.
Dr. Tim Sigler
Dr. Tim Sigler serves as provost and dean at Shepherds Theological Seminary in Cary, North Carolina. Prior to STS, he served at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for eighteen years, most recently as professor of Hebrew and Biblical Studies. He specializes in biblical languages and literature. He is a member of the Evangelical Seminary Deans Council, the Evangelical Theological Society, the Society of Biblical Literature, the Near East Archaeological Society, and the American Schools of Oriental Research. Dr. Sigler maintains an active international presence writing and lecturing as the Israel Scholar-in-Residence with CJF Ministries and hosting study tours throughout the biblical world with Wisdom Passages. His PhD dissertation at Trinity International University is titled, Emotional Geography in the Song of Songs: A Literary Study of the Contexts of Love. Grace College and Seminary awarded Dr. Sigler a grant to participate in their master of science in Higher Education program, a degree that he recently completed. He also has a master’s degree in Theological Studies, and a master of divinity from Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary. He has contributed to The Moody Bible Commentary; the Dictionary of Daily Life in Biblical and Post-Biblical Antiquity, and What Should We Think about Israel? Separating Fact from Fiction in the Middle East Conflict.